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My friends call me the PDA Ace (irritates the heck out of me). My name has meant death to four of the IBM brand Palm IIIs (WorkPads). Once I was running across the street with one in my jacket pocket...and it beat me to the other side. This is not the fall that killed it

I decided maybe it was time to stop destroying the pdas issued to me by my job, so I got a Palm III through eBay (now that delightful Weird Al song is running through my head). It's been dropped a few times, too, so much that I have to torque it to get the touchscreen to work right, and the backlight is in a coma (although probably not dead; opening it up and tinkering around once got it functioning again).

My determination not to help Bill Gates kill PalmOS wavered last year (I had an insatiable desire for storage space and color, inexpensively, which was asking too much of Palm), and I bought a BE-300 from Dell in mid-October. In less than two-weeks' time, it and its cradle had fallen off my desk in my "computer room." When the cradle ran out of USB cord, about 18" from the floor, the BE fell the rest of the way. I thought it'd be no big deal; I'd put Palms through worse, and it had fallen perfectly flat, unlike the first time I dropped it, but I thought wrong. Casio hadn't shipped the BE back before I completely lost what little mind I had left and ordered an Axim (I cannot afford these things, because I am constantly spending money on my computers).

Since then (then being December), I have lost count of how many times I have dropped my baby. Let's see...there was the time I was cleaning my work desk and accidentally knocked it into my tool/software bag on the floor. Oh, yeah, and the time I needed to plug in a network cable for a pc I was setting up, and I moved JUST out of reach of the headphone cord...and yanked my darling right off the desk and onto the floor. I know I've unintentionally tested the rubber grip's bounce at least once. It's been dropped a couple of times on the wireless card; had to use scotch tape to keep the cover from coming off (the wireless card, not the Axim, thank God!) after the second fall. The Ax? Lost a few chips of paint on the top right corner. The wireless card has proven to be pretty durable, too, for that matter, and it was rather low-cost for the time that it was purchased. I dropped the stylus in a break room at work, once. The tip broke off, and I once again resorted to eBay. Tell you what, come to think of it, so what if the IR port isn't consumer grade? I just realized, this is the first PDA to last more than four months with me, and I've been carrying at least one (sometimes two) for four years! So yeah, SOME people stop dropping them after a couple of times, but some of us don't. When I ordered the Axim, one of my friends asked me why I was doing it, since I was only going to drop it. I was actually insulted by that, logic be darned, but he gives me computer parts, so I'll allow him a shot at me every week or so, and my husband insults him all the time, anyway.

BTW, I finally gave my employer back the fifth WorkPad in working condition, except for the dead batteries; I'm tired of filling out the off-site inventory forms every freaking year. I figure two back-up PDAs will do, should the Axim ever fall in the line of duty (and not get back up).

Complete Care Warranty? Erm...no. I'd never break it if I got the warranty. It would magically stick to any surface.

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Everything will be ok in the end. If it's not ok, then it's not the end. Unless you're dead, then it's the end for you, but what would you care, especially since it's not the end for someone else. Unless everybody's dead...but then there are probably some aliens alive somewhere, and it's not the end for them.